Multiple reviews have shown that noncognitive factors are critical for success in education-al settings and that interventions should focus on them, especieducation-ally in childhood and adolescence (Cunha & Heckman, 2010; Kautz et al., 2014). Bailey et al. (2017) argued that skill-building in-terventions should be targeted toward the so-called “trifecta” skills. Trifecta means that the vari-ables should be malleable, fundamental, and would not have developed eventually in the absence of the intervention. It can be assumed that most of the noncognitive factors that emerged as pre-dictors of important human capital outcomes such as school performance are fundamental (Almlund et al., 2011; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002; Kautz et al., 2014; Poropat, 2009). The assump-tion of the malleability of constructs, however, seem to be a bit more complicated. It is important to understand that the nature of the numerous constructs that are subsumed under the term non-cognitive factors is far more diverse than those typically found in, for instance, non-cognitive skills.
Moreover, behind the different classes of constructs in the noncognitive set, there are many as-sumptions. The most prevalent assumption is that personality traits are not changeable, whereas social cognitive constructs are changeable, and therefore, the latter should be the focus of inter-ventions (Bailey et al., 2017; Pintrich, 2003; Whitehurst, 2016). Although neither Study 1 nor Study 2 directly tested whether either class of variables could be more easily changed through a direct intervention, both studies tested basic assumptions behind the stability, mutability, and context-sensitivity of these classes of constructs. Both studies showed no marked differences in stability and only small differences in context-sensitivity (in favor of the social cognitive con-structs). Whereas this does not prove that personality traits can be changed through interventions or that social cognitive variables are difficult to change, it does suggest that a more open ap-proach be used to consider which variables should be included in future intervention studies.
This is particularly important for educational policymakers who are currently focused on how to best enhance noncognitive skills (Heckman & Kautz, 2012; Kautz et al., 2014).
If one is willing to accept that personality traits are not perfectly stable and it is possible to change them, the next questions are: Should we intervene, and if yes, for which traits, and how?
To recap the definition of malleability from the Oxford English dictionary: something is mallea-ble when it is easily influenced or when it could be hammered or pressed into shape without breaking or cracking. The latter part of the definition seems particularly important. Personality, broadly construed, reflects a broad and complex formation of psychological constructs (e.g., Shiner & Caspi, 2003; Shiner & De Young, 2013) and underlies rapid development in childhood
and adolescence (e.g., Roberts & Pomerantz, 2004; Soto & Tackett, 2015). What will happen if we intervene? It is hard to guess. However, by contrast, there are multiple intervention studies to enhance social cognitive constructs (e.g., interests and self-concepts; see, Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016; O'Mara et al., 2006) and there are few concerns that fostering and intervening with social cognitive constructs could be harmful to the development of young people (but see Gaspard et al., 2016; Marsh et al., 2016). Now, why should it be harmful to intervene with personality traits, especially when people are barely conscientious or highly neurotic? Nevertheless, intervening in personality traits should be done very carefully and with continuous evaluation. However, the same is true for social cognitive variables. The next question is: Which personality traits are best to focus on in interventions that are designed to enhance school functioning and school perfor-mance? The evidence speaks for openness, neuroticism, and most clearly for conscientiousness (e.g., de Raad & Schouwenburg, 1996; Noftle & Robins, 2007; Poropat, 2009). Fittingly, Rob-erts et al. (2017), for instance, proposed the sociogenomic trait intervention model (STIM), which offers a theoretically driven bottom-up approach31 for changing conscientiousness. Putting it simply, they stated that the goal is to “change the states associated with the trait in a way that ensures that the change is enduring” (p. 200). The assumption is that targeting and activating core behaviors (which underlie the respective personality trait) in specific situations (states) and emphasizing the routinized practice of these behaviors would result in a consistent change in be-havior over time (i.e., in the trait; for a detailed description, see also Magidson et al., 2014; for an empirical study regarding the relation between homework effort and the development of consci-entiousness, see e.g., Göllner et al., 2017).
Enhancing and fostering conscientiousness seems promising not only because there is am-ple evidence of the positive effects of conscientiousness on academic performance (and other life domains such as work and health; Barrick & Mount, 1991; Kotov et al., 2010; Noftle & Robins, 2007; Roberts et al., 2007). There is also another line of research that has shown that conscien-tiousness is able to compensate (at least partly) for background disadvantages (resource substitu-tion hypothesis; see e.g., Damian et al., 2015) and also for a lack of motivasubstitu-tional resources such as interest (CONscientiousness × Interest Compensation; CONIC model, see e.g., Trautwein et al., in press; see also Chapter 1.2.3 and Study 3 in Chapter 5). The compensatory relation
31 The STIM model depicts an integration of behavioral activation theory (a form of cognitive behavior therapy), information from developmental research, and the sociogenomic model of personality traits (Roberts & Jackson, 2008; see also Magidson, Roberts, Collado-Rodriguez, & Lejuez, 2014).
tween conscientiousness and (individual) interest implies that individual interest will be less rele-vant for the academic effort of students who are high in conscientiousness (and vice versa). The understanding of this compensatory relation might also contribute to educational practice by helping to overcome the problematic division between practitioners who emphasize the need to strengthen “personality factors” and those who highlight the need to make school “interesting.”
However, as it is also well-documented that students are not interested in everything or in all sub-jects (strong domain-specificity of interest) and, moreover, that interventions in one domain can lead to unintended side effects in other domains (as a consequence of internal dimensional com-parisons, see e.g., Gaspard et al., 2016), conscientiousness might be a good construct to think about. Research on the CONIC model has indicated that both factors play a critical role in achievement-related behavior such as academic effort (Trautwein et al., in press; Trautwein et al., 2015).